


Sum of all freedom

by Astrotheology44



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood and Violence, Insensitive references to suicide and illness, M/M, Minor Character Death, Morally Ambiguous Character, Some gambling, much sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:29:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28159815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrotheology44/pseuds/Astrotheology44
Summary: Indulgence, pleasures.They are strongly tied to having a choice and he figures this is the sum of freedom.He realizes this boy has very limited freedom and even less choices and this has twisted something.
Relationships: Tyki Mikk/Allen Walker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	Sum of all freedom

His clothes remain dark charcoal no matter the number of bodies that have bled on them. The entire process is fairly mindless by now as Tyki goes for a usual tryst. 

Being the singular Deathly Omen in the third district does come with a specific sort of freedom hidden in the simple allowances of smoking however many cigarettes he deems fit on duty and mingling with folks outside of strict struntity.

Being on duty is always an exhilarating issue, even if it does become monotonous after a while.

He is taking a man's life outside of a bar at night and he enjoys it. It's the same old story, always a momentary rush for better or worse. 

The clockwork in their human veins which they cannot see is narrowing down with their seconds and it's a numinous feeling, to sense the stream of the soul's choices running thinner and thinner until it sends cracks through his reality. It's been years and the dealings addictive, in a way he doesn't have to concern himself with suppressing any longer.

Sometimes he meddles in the process as it is encouraged of his kind, smokes with the victims or buys them a drink for this or that reason, tells them their sentenced truth when he gets them alone in shadow to delight in how their panic ends up the very mechanism to overturn their fates.

Most of the time he simply waits and watches with the smallest of nudging, figures giving them the benefit of the doubt and a fighting change has its perks, yet he knows that when the fear grips them ever so tightly very few fight and would willingly claw their ways back into the living.

His job is always simple, deliver them to their _Time_ , watch their clocks tick and intervene to make the wheels spin faster towards an end. A feigned aspect of reaping. Doesn't mean it can't be fun.

He always wonders afterwards if it's the area. Every Omen to a place is how things operate and he'd been carefully favored to dwell in a space of less regulation than above and less people bothering to check for activity than below. With little to no interference from the visibly notable it becomes easy, too easy to slip in and out of these bistros and gutters and construction sites and navigate the unfamiliar faces comfortably.

But the human ambition is often lacking in this place and being able to make one's choices deliberately is, to him, _the sum of all freedom._

It goes on just like that for a while and it does become harder and harder to feel really touched by the grace once felt of his nature when the going gets _monotonous_. The duality and amusement of the matter are what's keeping the delicate balance and the motivation to expel his efforts and enjoy it.

He's meant to take the life of a man in the hospital by the name of Suman, the day things begin to _transcend_ the usual. He had observed the man to be suicidal.

There is no one around and it should be easy, nothing shows signs of differentiation from an ordinary target, if not for the disgusting nagging bitterness towards this person's livelihood. 

The man appears to have been put here to rest and recuperate if only he'll make it- _a doubtful predicament-_ he's here because of having begged, his choices have already sunk their width to a thin stream of a dark chord of fate. Over the inundating sensation of tasting someone's last day there float the pleas and woes he can sense off the poor soul and he finds nothing but apathy for it.

He books in under the name of an acquaintance of a relative who had passed just before, feigns interest for the family. Time himself and Road have access to enough records of the dead for this to not present too many unworkable flaws. By the weight put on these statistics to advance time's work, it's concerning how they have never gotten anywhere near combating the Angels openly as of yet, band of misguided saving graces that he heard the enemy is attempting to pass themselves as.

He greets reception, hands in manufactured identification and they look to him respectfully, politely. It's a good game so far. So good he indulges in how he wants to enjoy taking out frustration and aimless disgust on this soul's internally begging voice until he drowns it. 

There is some euphoria to be had playing on this man's contrast between suicidal ideations and survival instinct, he is sure, bringing someone in a liminality of their own choosing. He pushes past the big doors, quirks a smile and enters.

  
  


And then there's a loose thread in the framework. There is this _boy_ ..seated seven feet away from the patient, under the large windows that span a view of the outside abandoned sites. Travelling dark cloak and a steely gaze rising up from half across the room to meet Tyki, and he realizes this boy _cannot possibly be_ the patient's family. No similarity, no record.

And still he must be, since he was let in so easily much like he himself pretended.

He decides with a courteous enough wave and moving his coat aside to sit next to the stranger, that it is possibly not very important _\- a small complication-_ even if his heart skipped a strong beat as soon as he'd stepped through the door.

The young man seems new here, he'd never seen him before around town and would not have missed someone with _silver-white_ hair and scars, even if all was cloaked in a dark coat and partially hidden from view. There is this thick thrill of something being off, of riding the high risk of being found out as he examines his fellow stranger. He knows of everyone who was on Suman's record from Road and this boy is no one in his area.

With this, the target can't be directly killed anymore, only be driven to hopelessness and _waited_ on.

The boy stares straight at him, for a quiet moment and seems to scrutinize him more than is comfortable for either.

"I'm sorry. Allen Walker." He explains finally, moving to offer the space to sit in comfort.

_Too_ polite, Tyki notices. He resists giving his name in return for the moment.

"I knew him briefly. Maybe he'll make it." Allen adds with a wistful small smile.

They sit for what is a few awkward minutes which feel much longer in the big room with just them, Suman in between consciousness and an end and the monitors showing stabilizations.

He concedes. "Tyki Mikk." He offers a hand, receives a reluctant shake that the other retracts soon. 

"How'd you know him?" He prods, curiosity winning out the new tension in the room.

"Oh,I am a friend of a relative. I was concerned for them." 

It's not lost how focused he looks to the patient, still in tubes and barely making it, an almost dejected look. The boy is _lying_ through his teeth. He has to suppress a laugh at how it's the very same lie that got him in here. It becomes _interesting_. 

"That you were, _huh_?" He muses out loud amused, doesn't fail to catch how Walker's smile turns nervous and he's avoiding elaborations, swallowing down instead.

Then Tyki does what he's here to do. _Push_. 

"He's made a few interesting _choices_. Heard he got involved with some people he couldn't pay.

Didn't have the dignity to withhold his end of the bargain so _poisoning_ himself before they got to him it was. Now he's _begging_ the nurses to live." 

He doesn't mind how he's eyed with suspicion, expected it for having disrespected the dying loud and clear but it's worth it to feel the nasty twitch in the frame of the man's life cramping in on itself, to know he'd been _heard_.

"You think that's a _choice_?" The boy is irritated, all but frowning in disbelief at him.

"He did not want to live _anyway_." He reiterates and feels thrown off into this conflictual stance he doesn't much care for.

"He would have if he knew they were waiting for him at home. How would _you_ know?"

Silence grows unnerving until Allen breaks it again.

"He got cornered. And I heard from his family. He's still trying to live for them, _that's why_ …Of course he would beg. _Anyone_ would feel despair."

So he didn't lie about being a family friend. That complicates things. 

As if on cue, there is a feeling then of a chord strung tight reverberating, the atmosphere shifts and the patient's lifeline almost attempts to expand, akin to the drawing of a fresh breath inwards. 

He can't let this boy ruin his work.

'He made a choice' he thinks stubbornly but does not say, does not want to mingle much with this mystery stranger on a potentially failed mission and can feel a sour mood rising. Soothing this into something more like calm, he sighs, admits.

“Everyone wants to live deep down, I'll give you that..." and thinks of cases who struggled, images of those whose eyes lit up between hope and terror as they tried to escape his grip running from the ill omens even when he could feel the thickness of their time echoing in his throat and taste it. 

“But some choose _not to make the mark_.” He steadies his tone saying it, golden gaze wandering from the covered patient to his impromptu conversation partner. 

"Tell you the truth, _I don't think he's going to make it out of this one._ " He spits as clearly as he can to make sure it reaches the comatose ears alongside them, that the patient's heart can remember and cling to the possibility of its death, then reclines down in the simple chairs and nervously reaches into his coat pocket for the cigarette pack and a lighter. 

"A smoke?" He offers.

" _Bad_ _choice_ , don't you think?" Boy turns up his nose and looks around, in front of them the big open windows. Sky above and the lost below. 

"Especially here. We're not supposed to." He then calls Tyki out on the hypocrisy and misconduct with accusing silver eyes that are unaware he's cursed with _more than one_ incarnation.

Still, to his surprise a pale arm does reach and take his offer. He lights it for Allen and there could be calm here. 

He presses still. "Much like our fellow here."

He gets a glare in return and he can tell the other wants to give him a piece of his mind. He'd seen the way the boy held clenches fists under these dark clothes for most of the encounter.

The patient's life twists back into a single thread.

And twists.

And _twists._

And Tyki closes his eyes with a crooked smile passing it as a soothing inhalation of cigarette smoke as he feels it beginning to _dissolve_ . He _pushes it just right_ to get it to crumble to ash beyond a singularity. Feels the let up and the energy and _urges it to explode_ from this new life lost, nowhere left to go but to void out. 

The monitor beeps once accusingly, then goes blank.

The boy stands up, looks to the patient as if alarmed suddenly.

" No way. But he was _stabilized_ . _He_..."

" Yeah, you _would_ think so. Get what's calling for you." Tyki stands up shrugging, gets to going even if he wonders who this boy is still and admires the patience of not having been snapped at earlier.

"Wait! " He's yelled after. 

So finally something broke and he feels the other is reacting honestly. He turns to see anger and strange resolve battling out.

But this is a nuisance, his job is done and he won't overstay.

"You're not family, are you!?" he's questioned.

" _No_." 

He smiles shamelessly and steps out and picks a quick pace on the way out, letting the boy deal with it however he sees fit, ignoring the cold and alarmed string of _'What did you dos?'._

He's seen broken people before but not many are so stubborn and challenge him. As he makes for out swiftly that day he hopes they don't meet again.

Luck isn't on his side.

The second time he sees the same boy, from away in the halls at considerable distance, it leaves a rather sour taste. 

The other is cradling another limp body, trying to talk it back to life as if desperate and this time his senses are letting him know loud and clear that something is amiss. Different hospital ward, same opaque decorum that is lifeless and the same resolute look on the other's face. 

Seems that this patient, so _distraught_ with betrayal from a loved one and having suffered for days under tormenting thoughts had found his way into dosing on _one too many_ sedatives and this may be their last day alive. 

He can feel their time approaching, the echo in the making reverberating louder and louder and he grows hungry at the sensation, but long as he can see the other in the wards something feels incomplete. His intuition is running _mad_ for no particular reason. He avoids Walker. He only picks hours where they won't interfere.

When he visits in, pretends once more to be a concerned relative or friend of some sort and they let him. Allen is already there but the recognition in his eyes isn't. Tyki had reasoned this ambiguity of results, the indirect approach doesn't fit the reports he has to give _quite_ right, so he'd come dressed plainly in day clothes, a disguise to slip through and alleviate the suspicion of having a thousand names attached to ever but one face. 

In changed glasses, changed style and a change in his pace there is ever more freedom to delight in. 

He didn't think it would work quite this well until he's astonished by the complete lack of remembrance in the meddling boy's eyes.

This is good then, allows for blending with the crowd and observing. It's not as though Tyki is particularly happy to see him either and he cannot pull the same audacious honesty again and win the job for the day.

He sits quietly, lazily, doesn't even smoke and waits for this one to pass silently because it's almost an _inevitability_ again, letting Allen do all the meddling. 

He takes note of the other the entire day, blending across the mixing crowded hospital hall in a sea of strangers, witnesses each dedicated _hour_ of sweet words and reasurrements and conviction with which Allen Walker talks to the dying. Feels the dark point moving from singular to _tapestries_ to fuller landscapes .

Through seemingly a miracle, the man is said to have come to his senses the second day, and Tyki _wonders_ , thinks of seeking out the same place just to see if the young man will be there still, but does not have the time.

For the next few weeks whenever he's offered a target Allen is there as a constant.

There's a young woman in the park resting on the swings, her hair a pale blonde wave and her complexion sickly. She's holding onto her chest and coughing up her lungs between sobs in the night and he knows her time is running from an illness or another. He acts the concerned stranger for the crying woman, approaches carefully, low voice and soft words concealing a grip of death on her shoulder.

And then Allen is there, he's not certain where from. He had run to them in a striking flash of white in the night glow and leaned in, also asked her a steady and concerned _" Are you all right?"_ and she actually looks up and listens. 

They converse about her illness. Tyki takes his hand off her and it's replaced by Allen's reasurrements. Their eyes meet briefly in this transaction, it's _something_ lurking that neither can fathom in the entanglements. Something Tyki suspects as he no longer feels this girl's life tightening in on her but doesn't want to name. Behind his eyelids he feels that expansive breath of this girl's life dripping back into multitudes. 

His enjoyment is spoiled and he's too taken aback to really focus so he veers off into the darkness, smokes a pack to numb the growing irritation.

Walker's there probably a good fifty times after. It's as though he's taken on the role of the bad omen for himself. In the garages, near the docks, at _so many_ hospitals and asylums for the elderly that he just routinely visits and it becomes accepted that he's a volunteer.

He spends time and talks to _everyone_ to keep them alive as the boy's own heart seems to grow heavy as his eyelids. 

He'd hold the life of the whole district if he could and he's ruining _every single one_ of Tyki's hits. He'd be sure the boy is also _specifically_ tracking him to do so, had he not checked and had the other now showing his disgust towards him time and time again. He'd play more the Devil to get the targets if it didn't feel so pettily _unidimensional_ . So _dull and lifeless._

Still, when the cards are finally revealed. It _feels_ good. He'd been made to double down on the work in reluctance, refusing to be bested. He can't tell for sure when the last traces of apprehension then turn to anticipation.

Once he starts accepting the competition, he sees it anew. Allen Walker has _backbone_ and resilience and is a lucky break, perhaps, and Tyki wonders if he'll get to talk him down ever again.

Road calls for him, her manner _strangelike_ and _unfathomable_ , similar to the ways she employs in taking her targets in their dreams, seemingly accidents that rarely left names in the mortuary rubric or became too well known as basket cases. Sometimes their ends turn peaceful, at times demented under her dreamweaving. 

Road figures something.. _to be strange._

" _More_ humans you're mingling with? Time won't take kindly of this."

She teases one day and it makes him internally jump for a second. She clicks her tongue and mouths thereafter. 

_"Silly..._ "she _chides_ , in her usual childish fashion and he realizes that he can trust her. That she also prefers a certain degree of freedom over her dreamscape that even Time can't fully touch.

At the mention of humans and mingling he always _..remembers._

Memory does not work the same for them, half manifestations of streams of personal consciousness and half entwined with streams of consciousness from death aspects before him, previous incarnations always threatening to erode at his ego over and over. And yet he still finds the images of those he spared. 

Of a child, that could not have even been a teenager, coughing next to the mine and of two older men giving him strange looks when he’d been down and out after a rough night hit and inviting him for a drink. People he was supposed to have killed without a thought, whom he thought to indulge with after all and leave it to the world to untangle their threads instead of pushing, the possibility of pushing always dangling dangerously in reach _nevertheless_.

It is for the most part what keeps the temptation and joy, more than the thrill of being the one to bring the people an end, that he can carry _contrast_ , that they didn't suspect and thus revealed sides of themselves that they wouldn't have, had they known.

The brightest time perhaps that he meets Allen Walker again, it becomes clear and it feels like _whiplash_ . Like cold water when he realizes why the coincidental meetings _kept_ happening, burning silver and white wings unfolding in front of him from the other's cloak as he is turned around from a victim and the vice grip he had on them, quite fiercely registering a fist to his jaw.

He takes note of Allen when he looks back up with blood dripping down to ruin his disguise, all see-through anyway. 

He recognizes, clear as sunlight for the first fated time that he'd been dealing with _an Angel_. An up and coming one judging by the lack of halo and the odd greyish tint to his wing tips that he'd never seen before, noting as the boy is lacking the general calm of one.

If anything, Allen is seething, looks not quite reckless but wild enough that it's startling paired with his pure attire.

"I should have known it was you. You were a _deathling_.." 

It's Allen who spits it out first, and Tyki thinks this could be the fated result of him coloring his life in oppositions as much as possible, to have an _Angel_ come and oppose him after all. He almost has to laugh at the smallness of the name he's ascribed and the implicitly lacking knowledge the boy must have of his kind.

"You work for Time. _Why_?" Allen presses.

"We all choose our paths, boy." He deflects. 

He'd thought that'd be enough of an explanation. It leaves the other wanting to bloody him up even more and he lunges towards him. It hits and he blocks it.

"Cut the crap! It's not like all of these people have to die. I don't know if it's what you say or do but why do you have to do it?!"

There's a thin veneer of desperation coloring the other's aggravation, chest rising and falling but gaze never wavering. It's almost charming.

This is not a conversation Tyki wants to share with him or any other crusader on that side of the coin, still. That people have their time, whether it is a good or evil thing to push. 

He does find that he respects the other's determination a bit much for the pity sort of lacking reply. He grabs Allen by the left arm-a strange dark thing for an Angel- and twists until the boy agrees to put some distance between them.

"All of them were already close to Time, the targets." 

He feels Allen's curiosity then, the fighting grip of his slacking and the other perking up to listen in hopes of finding Tyki more _humane_.

He _hates_ that, it's nothing he wants, he doesn't desire the boy's pity nor salvation.

"Don't get me wrong, boy. I'm not a charity case and I won't claim not to be a little evil. I _do_ take most of them down because I _feel_ like it."

He shrugs and deflects the fist that flies towards his face enough to get away.

  
  
  


It all sits fairly wrong afterwards, with curses towards himself for the carelessness of not having noticed the Angels stepping in so close. It's not as though his district, relaxed as is, is expected to be completely devoid of traces of the enemy. It has been his nonchalance of dealings that allowed this to escalate.

There had been others before, _too-_ a girl, who Road took somewhat of an interest in, passing as an aerial dancer as she went through town before her wings unfolded. She managed to say she'd been a performer, would have gone unnoticed if not for the inhuman strength of her legs and her convictions light up in an upright _halo_. 

But she never did bother and she doesn't tend to veer off so far from the higher districts. 

He only sees the archivist's son, one of the _connoisseurs of the holy arts_ and currently involved with Angelic work purely because their kind pass where they may,much like himself. The aforementioned girl because there had been rumours at one time that she was trying to protect someone from down here. It makes it all harder, but more interesting anytime he is called to keep an eye on any of them.

It _confirms_ of course, that it wasn't a conjuring and this seemed to be Allen Walker's nature all along, as the next couple of months are spent in a frustrating dance of trying to take under yet another person whose time has come and this being _-Angel-boy_ being so earnest and zealous in stopping it every single time. 

He should be angrier by all means and the collective memories of death and Time's instructions behind his eyelids definitely _press_ for it in demands and hungers for something more when he tries to rest, _tries to let it go_ , but he's kept it at bay before and he will _now_. 

Thinking of the angels he's heard of and seen before, Allen Walker does not seem to have neither the condescension nor the empty righteousness so when the hits had become repeatedly numbing and this is providing reprieve, it's hard to stop seeking him out.

He asks Road again, if perhaps she knew about this strange case. It's when he falls almost too fast asleep at night in new lodging under what seems like a deceptively humane dreaming experience. 

She steps in, her unconscious messages don't quite resonate so well with him- _just gaps and pieces and feelings seen from afar._ Sometimes full phrases. 

He understands enough when she explains there has been only one case before - hears _"greying feather, oscillating hollows"-_ a strange _sadness_ like a lullaby ringing throughout. She is almost emphatically cryptic on knowing Allen. But she asks of him, an odd momentary seriousness.

"You might want to look after him, if you care about him."

Tyki doesn't understand. He doesn't want to hear the lectures about mingling with humans either, so he doesn't push for her to contact again or explain, slides out of the shared dream and into rest. 

He starts to understands the next day, as he holds Allen's wrists down tightly and it's the fourth person Allen couldn't save this week alone. They fight less, even though it should have been _more_. The Angel has become incredibly evasive and slides off radar often.

The recent failures must have taken their toll on both sides, Tyki thinks at _first_ , as he himself had been less motivated by the polarizing fighting and more drawn to uncover the other's state of being. 

The boy, _however_ , is thrashing infuriatingly while trying to escape him despite any previous attempt of his to remain non-threatening and get more information. He's being _even less_ cooperative than in a usual quarrel, not standing for answers, nor for his time and Tyki feels on edge.

He'd started not responding to much of anything, did not seem to notice Tyki'd lessened his killing streak half in non-involvement and the absent numbness is _worrisome_. 

Within the corner of a crowded street against the walls they stop push-pulling and Allen's form slumps down in contrast to the rising buildings as he hides his face. Tyki only catches him breathing heavy before he reigns himself in, attempts to calm down and numb his look into something more personable.

And then there is the same old feeling, _unmistakable_ in its _wrongness_. 

In the vastness of space he looks down to Allen's _sunken_ eyes and the clock starts ticking in his veins, a thrumming pulse signaling the boy's choices are _narrowing down to one thin line_.

This changes something. _What it is,_ he doesn't fully comprehend. 

It's beyond the enmity or the dissatisfactions or the interest, beyond the ever growing fondness for these scruffles.

This brings the _possibility-_ he used to think _'inevitability'_ so easily and regularly without a lump forming in his throat- that he might be able to _twist this boy's death too_ on his fingers or _another Omen_ may offer him up in service of _Great Time_ . A thread that at first did not seem so vulnerable, that gave him _so much work_ , and the boy did give him so much ruined rotten work. 

He should be _happy_ , mouth refusing to quirk up for days to come, lungs heavier than usual, blood thicker. It's all arranged itself quite nicely, really, he should be grateful. All but for the gnawing feeling that he doesn't want Allen Walker to die _at all._

And so he chases him out, whether for personal indulgence or the pretense of bringing about more untimely ends in people around them, it's a race against the clock, against despair it's a plea. He teases him, tries to rile him up, the anger was a better fire lighting up white hair and bright eyes than this hull of depression.

"Dance with me more, don't you want to _save them_?" He breathes out a cocky guilting mockery of an invite one night next to the docks under pretense of influencing a drowning he has no hand in, just to drive the other mad enough to want to fight him, to want to stay alive. Masks the _'Stay with me more'_ neatly tucked inside it where it can't see the light, because he hasn't tested it enough to ensure its taste either. 

The dust settles in regardless and the desire passes as half-hearted hope at best when Walker starts to flat-out ignore him. It is when it begins to feel that the time he newly desires of Allen's is a dark limitation of its own, a danger for his timeline. 

This bizarre powerlessness to do anything to change the other's finality of weavings drowns under smoke and nights but it always comes back to haunt in the daytime. He works, really works to forget for a short period of time. Residents around his place fall ill and he twists their lives sharp and brutal and more crudely than he rightfully needs to, believing it would bring reprieve. It doesn't much help at all.

Allen is instead of livid, increasingly hopeless and he knows not what to do.

He considers, on cold days walking through town, looking back to the hospital wards, if he could ever give someone a choice instead of taking their last one away.

  
  


"Come out of this cold with me," he invites one day out of the blue, freshly snowfall-coated and pointing outside of a bar with lights dimming. 

It's a rare occurrence at this point to witness the other wingless, appendages retracted and looking more lithe, still ethereal. Through distrust and warry looks he is joined, a reminder of the first cigarette accepted in the hospital room.

It's not so easy to rid the other of the tension on his shoulders, even stepping through the bar door and being welcomed by glittering lights in corners where betting is going on seem to contrast them both in black and white. But it's a good indulgence, and soon enough it works. 

He buys the other a meal, pays for it in full and blames it on the holidays approaching and not some kindness. A reprieve from all the fighting. He finds out quickly that Allen is a savage in gambling matters, unholy in pursuit in numerous ways and materialistic to a fault at times. It's endearing and it gets him laughing loudly but it's ever the more endearing to see the other drop the stress off his frame little by little.

He doesn't miss the way there is still a clenching of the jawline and a small tremble of holding back tension to the boy everytime he looks to him and remembers, always a few feet apart even if that's growing lesser as he turns from his poker match victims they joined in and they can laugh together at some poor man's fate. Doesn't miss how he isn't trusted but thinks it's a fine price to pay, fine even combined with an empty wallet to feel that he might be able to breathe some life back into the boy for once. 

"Let me guess." he hears Allen turn at the end of their hands, bar clear in the corner except for them.

"You want me to just drop the chase so you can get them later..or..? What kind of game are you in for, Mikk?"

Well,that was not it. He sighs, unnerved. He's been trying for a bit to get to him and it's not working. 

He considers direct confrontation. Waits for the other to put his winnings aside for the night and puts one gloved hand over the other.

"Actually, I'm here for you." 

Allen raises sharply upwards and starts wanting to step away and Tyki can't fathom why until the implications of what he said fall on him and he laughs. 

"Not that I'm going to kill you."

Allen seems tired, exhausted yet himself. 

"Who do you do this for, boy? At least I do this for myself. Who are you trying to save? Them? Or yourself? Your belief that people want this?" 

His golden eyes narrow in on Allen.

"If I tell you that, it doesn't matter." Allen holds an uncharacteristically sardonic smile. 

Flicker in his eyes and he trails off, distant under the yellow lights at the bar. 

" I had once made someone a promise...but right now it feels like it doesn't count for much.."

Tyki stops him, because he doesn't want to see him like this. 

"So what, you gonna end it all too and lose hope? Someone as stubborn as you? I never thought you a quitter. You've been a pain in my ass in many ways since day one, boy. 

But you're spectacular at finding a way for those people when there doesn't look like there is one. So find one for you". 

He stops himself,oddly self-conscious for the compliments he's put on the other's shoulders.

"That's not why." Allen darkens again, looks down at the table.

"I lost the ability to extend their life a long time ago." 

It dawns on Tyki. The darkening of the wings, from tips to tops to the entire greyness of their span, the moment he felt Allen's life cornering in, the recent failures.

An Angel who cannot serve in the light is no Angel and thus only death awaits the one before him. 

The room strings along as the black fog behind his eyelids becomes a clear tar line when he looks to Allen. He tries to keep it at bay, keep his half-smile for the other, but he knows _-inevitability_.

"Maybe I was enjoying our time, too. You're not so bad either, for a pain in my ass." 

Allen smiles before leaving him on the wooden chair with much to worry for and still Tyki is warmed.

  
  
  


He's treated with more avoidance from then on and he thinks to understand. Allen doesn't need the pity, certainly, but this does not feel like justice.

He takes trips to the upper districts in secrecy after what feels like years, if only to find out more. He learns through wasting some nights around the coast that this was not the original area that the Angelic Cathedrals had assigned for Allen Walker and it raises a question he has to ask the next time he sees the boy. 

He learns, with great exaltation that an Angel cannot die a human death.

He learns thereafter with more fury and recalcitration that there are worse fates.

"Why aren't you uptown? Were you so interested in Time's territories?" he asks the next time they meet in town, to the point as he finds the other still wants to avoid him. 

In half calm, half persuasive concern he's frustrated at how he still needs to pin the other down to get answers on a regular day even without any ill intent. It's a knowledge that Allen doesn't perceive this for what it is, might think it feigned nonchalance and lingering lack of empathy and as he stomps out on Tyki's foot forcefully to free himself he prepares still for an attack- as though there's never been a break of pattern.

"Ow, son of a ..! Wait a minute here." he yelps.

"Why should I?" the other hisses.

"You're not assigned to three, someone I know caught the Angels we knew were in three before and I looked you up. 

You were _never even supposed to be here_ , were you?" He insists.

He expects more bite, a challenge in return, but now Allen's face gives way to a self-ironic look and it's deja-vu as his brows tighten together.

" I, _I_ _can't get there_ _anymore_." He pauses, stricken and then continues on wavering,

"Every time I try to touch the gate...it burns, it _burns_ me, sector four and everything above it used to be my home and now it _hurts to be there.. I._

My wings are _getting heavier and heavier._ " he laughs but it's mirthless.

Tyki finds himself startled by the fullness of confession like a bad repeat of the day before and its revelations. He wants to do something- anything but the other meets his eyes and something twists to hear him say _"I don't have much time"._

He thought there would be more. That this boy would have plagued him forever. There has to be more time. But he knows- _feels and senses_ that isn't how any of the mechanisms work. He knows he can't ask this of Time, which only exists as a devouring force of deconstruction. He asks of Road, if she would help.

"Have you ever heard of an Angel turning into a Deathly force?" he remembers asking of Road once before as a joke, when he had first emerged as this form from the universal mold and her lips having turned tight and expression sorrowful. 

"Only _one_. And it was the other way around." 

She had said and made it clear it was all she would say on the matter at that point. 

She hasn't said how nor why, but Tyki suspects this is what must happen when Allen is sitting next to another victim he could not reap in time and neither could Allen save as the younger rests his head against the doorframe of the bar they played at and his wings have grown noticeably blackened, irises gaining goldlike specks to the vacant look he holds. 

He recognizes this process when the other twitches, feels it with how the room suddenly can reverberate with an undertone of dark thread and possibilities between them again and again, approaching convergence.

Indulgence, _pleasures._ They are strongly tied to having a choice, and he figures this is the sum of freedom. He realizes this boy has very limited freedom and even less choices and this has twisted something.

  
  


On the day in which the upper district opens the gate he sees Allen get dragged in willingly and thinks the boy a _fool_ . Can only think him a fool in his goodness and in the hopes it might hurt less, which it does _not_. 

He follows the comondrum with sharp eyes until the gates close and there is nothing again. A fool he is, but at least this is a choice he gets to make.

 _'Maybe he wants to die'_ he swallows and marvels as to how this now seems hard to accept. How it seems more like a self-soothing tale and the unfamiliar hint of fear.

He thinks he sees now why this boy had clung so much to keeping those people alive and has to laugh at how the very feeling defies the nature he had so badly clung to, the sum of his choices.

The boy gets arrested on that day and sentenced to execution the next day, the Fallen Angel's path a closed one and to be masked and ejected from Cathedral public recordings easily. He still finds he wants for him to have more than _this_ , even if he'd never been too good at giving anyone a reason for living. 

In selfishness, in indulgence, he sets off to follow the leads with a little help, none too willing to let this thread twist to nothing in lieu of a fighting chance.

**Author's Note:**

> Through wanting to explore these two's dynamic through the lens of Tyki as a reaper sort of entity and Allen with lifespan-expanding qualities I ended up with a universe that oddly enough aligns with their canon symbolism and struggles, to a point where I feel like putting up. This has been done to get it out of my drafts and it might be edited later. Writing seems to be a long progress of continuous lovely learning that I hope I can improve upon. Thank you for reading! And if I ever end up orphaning this-as I might, I'll still be on the lookout and appreciating feedback. I hope you find something in this that you either like or that gets you thinking.


End file.
